Yanting Sim · · 8 min readOne of Finland’s rising SaaS startups is expanding to Asia. Here’s a look at its culture.
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This story started off framed as a day in the life of a Smartly.io employee. I reached the Singapore office bright and early that Tuesday morning, all ready to document the routine ins-and-outs of the Smartly.io employee.
Until I realized there were none.
“We don’t have a fixed routine,” said Jose Kantola, head of the Asia-Pacific team at Smartly.io, “one week you can be at our company offsite event in Greece, the other week settling administrative matters in Singapore, and the next meeting clients and closing sales in Thailand. No two days are the same.”
No two days are the same.
With the young, international team in hyper-growth, we should have seen this coming.
Smartly.io is a Facebook marketing automation tool that offers marketers a quick way to create, manage and optimize social advertising campaigns.
The Finnish SaaS company started out as a two-man founding team in 2013, and has since grown to 90-strong in Helsinki, Singapore, San Francisco, New York, and Berlin. US$500 million in advertising spending runs through their platform annually.
It has over 400 clients globally, including Lazada, SkyScanner, and Zalora in Singapore. Not too shabby for its four-member team that has set up in Singapore just under eight months ago. The team is in charge of growing the market in Asia-Pacific.
Inside Smartly.io
Led by Jose, the Smartly.io Singapore team occupies an office space in The Great Room, a cosy coworking space within the central business district of Singapore.
Jose (foreground) leads the Smartly.io APAC team in Singapore. Photo credit: Sim Yanting
![Although he focuses on account management and business development, Jose also helps expand the Asia-Pacific team. Here he’s on a conference call with a potential employee from Thailand. Typical of a fast-growing startup, employees at Smartly often wear many hats. “[This] allows us to both learn new skills quickly and have a diverse impact on where the company is heading,” he said. Photo credit: Sim Yanting](https://cdn.techinasia.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/DSC_0988edited-small.jpg)
Although he focuses on account management and business development, Jose also helps expand the Asia-Pacific team. Here he’s on a conference call with a potential employee from Thailand. Typical of a fast-growing startup, employees at Smartly often wear many hats. “[This] allows us to both learn new skills quickly and have a diverse impact on where the company is heading,” he said. Photo credit: Sim Yanting
The Smartly.io culture
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